Raising your grandchildren

Larry Wingham was running late Tuesday. The 69-year-old Vietnam combat veteran had to pick up his 11-year-old granddaughter, Veronica, from her first day of middle school before heading over to the Sepulveda VA to pick up his medication prescriptions at the pharmacy.

Veronica had been nervous about going to her new school, and Larry’s wife, Penny, was anxious to see how it had gone.

“She went in nervous, but came out smiling,” said Penny, 66. “I knew she’d find her way.”

When your mom dies when you’re 6, and your grandparents all of a sudden become your parents, you learn at an early age to adapt and face new challenges.

Over in Pasadena on the same day, Colleen Hall-Johnson was juggling balls in the air — trying to figure out how she was going to get her five grandchildren — four boys and one girl ranging in age from 4 to 13 — to three different schools on time, and pick them up everyday.

It’s been nearly a year now since her daughter’s drug abuse problems made this recently retired special education teacher a full-time parent again at 59.

“I’m a widow raising five children,” she says, sounding tired as she drove two of the boys to a youth league football practice. “I used to be grandma just having fun with them. It’s not the same now.”

Across L.A. County in Carson, Ann Overton is sitting at home talking about the challenges of raising a teenage granddaughter when you’re 63.

“I’d been living in a grandparents world,” she says. “Enjoying my granddaughter, but at the end of the day sending her back to her mother. Then, her mother died.”

There was never any doubt in the minds of these women that they’d do the right thing when the time came. If you’ve got a heart beating in your body, you’d do the same thing, they say.

But they also knew they needed some help. They weren’t in their 20s and 30s anymore — starting a family with all that wide-eyed excitement and energy. They’d been there, done that.

Advertisement

They were pushing 60 and 70 now — thinking about cruises, not curfews.

That’s where Sylvie de Toledo came in. She founded GAP — Grandparents as Parents — in 1987 after her own parents took in their grandson when Sylvie’s sister died.

She could see the emotional and physical toll it takes to become a hands-on parent again when you’re well into your AARP years.

“They’re all on an emotional roller coaster — overwhelmed and tired, but knowing they’re doing the right thing,” de Toledo says. “They need to know they’re not alone.

“It’s important for the kids, too. They meet other kids and see they’re not the only ones being raised by their grandparents.”

There were 10 grandparents at that first support group 27 years ago. Today, there are more than 3,000 in 20 different support groups meeting weekly throughout Los Angeles County.

“You can pour out your problems and cry if you need to — or boast when something good is happening,” Hall-Johnson says. “GAP is your family.”

Overton says she used to think she had it tough until she met a woman in her late 60s in GAP who was raising six grandchildren after her daughter passed away. She stopped thinking she had it so tough.

“It’s been a challenge, but a blessing, too,” Overton says. “You think it’s just you going through this, but there are thousands of grandparents out there facing the same challenges.”

The Wingham’s joined GAP about a month after their daughter died. One of the neighbors down the street told them about the support group. They had no idea that she was raising a grandchild on her own, too.

“I started wondering how many grandparents like us were out there with no idea that there was this wonderful support group just waiting to help,” Penny says.

“At one of the first meetings we attended, a woman who looked about my age (66) talked about how she and her husband were giving a New Year’s Eve party at their house, and almost at the stroke of midnight the doorbell rang.

“It was a police officer holding the hands of their two young grandchildren. They were given a choice. Take them or they were going to foster care.”

It happens more than you think, Sylvie de Toledo says.

For more information on a GAP support group near you, call (818) 264-0880.

Dennis McCarthy’s column appears Friday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com